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Formulas
being an aspect of the vitality of the Kunstsprache, and of the willingness of
doiSoi to experiment with their lexicon, must be accommodated in any
satisfactory account of Homeric diction. 5 Here then the question is how
hapax legomena can be deployed in a sentence otherwise made up of formular
elements by a composer who relies heavily on such elements. When it is put
in that way the problem posed by a hapax legomenon for the singer is not
radically different from that posed by an otherwise unused grammatical
form of a regular part of his lexicon. The unique grammatical form will
indeed bring with it the verbal associations of the regular forms, but since
the associated words and phrases would be built around the particular
metrical shape of the regular forms they are likely to be as much a hindrance
as a help in handling the unusual form.
The scale of the problem presented by true hapax legomena and by many
uniquely occurring grammatical forms is quite serious. The printed text
of the Iliad is made up of some 111,500 words, i.e. segments of text marked
off by verse-ends or spaces, or about 63,000 if particles, pronouns, and
prepositions are ignored. Many of these 'words' are repeated, but about
11,000, or more than one in six, are found once only. About 2,000 of them
according to M. Pope are true hapaxes, lexical items occurring just once in
the poem. 6
(ii) Localization
The Homeric verse is traditionally described by its outer metric as a
sequence of six dactylic feet with catalexis and optional substitution of —
for uu. The colometric studies initiated by H. Frankel in 1926 describe the
verse by its inner metric as a sequence of cola. The interrelations of cola (see
vol. 1 18-23) are as supple as the alternations of spondees and dactyls in the
traditional description and have this advantage, that it is shown how verbal
units of composition 'come naturally to make the sentence and the verse'.
The doi86s does not fit words into a schema; his units of thought present
themselves to him as, or as part of, a colon located in a specific part of the
5 See M. M. Kumpf, Four Indices of the Homeric Hapax Legomena (Hildesheim 1984) for
statistics, N. J. Richardson in Bremer, HBOP 165-84, for argument, Edwards, vol. v 53-5.
Edwards concludes his discussion of hapax legomena with these words: '[Homer] was also
completely at ease in employing in his verse words which are not only non-formular but which
must be considered (on our limited evidence) foreign to the usual epic vocabulary.' M. Pope,
^0,35 ( J 9^5) I- 8> draws attention to new coinages in Homer.
6 'Word' is used here as a publisher might speak of a 'book of 80,000 words'. The composer's
vocabulary or lexicon of course is very much shorter: syxos is one entry in the lexicon
but supplies 205 'words' to the text of the Iliad. Statistics are mine. I am indebted to the Revd
A. Q. Morton, formerly of the University of Edinburgh, for making available to me computerized
word-lists and indices.